Facsimile
by Nadie2
Summary: Loki didn't just copy Jack. He made two versions each of Jack and Sam, plus one of Daniel. Now a teenage Jack and Sam have to figure out what life with toddlers and no Stargate is going to look like for them.
1. Discovery

It's the nicest wake-up that Samantha Carter has had in a long time. Even mostly asleep, she knows that she's not at work, because it isn't claxons calling her to duty reminding her that the whole world relies on her. It's not the industrial blare of the military issued alarm clock in her quarters on base-always waking her after she's only gotten a few hours of sleep.

It's not the gentle nudge of her commanding officer's military boots waking her for watch an off world watch half an hour after her watch was supposed to start (it's a kind boot nudge, downright sweet).

It's not an alarm with "Rocket Man" that awakes her on the nights she actually makes it to her own bed in the house she barely sees.

It's also not the sunlight which wakes her up when, once in a blue moon, she sleeps as long as her body needs.

It is a gentle velvety sigh. A body moving closer to her. A tiny body. Sam pulls the blanket away to reveal a little girl. Her pale cheeks are flushed with baby sleep. Her hair is so blond it is almost transparent. Her limbs look thin and brittle like she could break with a strong wind, but Sam knows they are stronger than they look. She knows that the same way she knows the eyes will be blue when they open.

She remembers when all of these things belonged to her.

A mewlike objection comes from the girl's mouth about the absence of the blanket.

"Who are you?" Sam asks.

The girl doesn't answer, but just pouts, and clings to Sam.

"Sweetie, do you know where you Mommy is?" This child is a spitting image of Sam when she was her age, but she knows that isn't possible. Then again, her job is to do impossible things.

The girl looks up at her confused and alarmed, "Mommy?"

"Um…no," Sam says.

She picks up the phone, and dials speed dial one. She tries to pretend that the only reason her boss is the first person on her speed dial is because she's a workaholic. It's a lie, because she's never actually used the number. He's on the base almost as much as she is, and she drops by the office he pretends he doesn't have whenever she has something work related to tell him. The speed dial? It's a symbolic thing. Because after seven years, you take intimacy where you can.

"Sir?" She says into the phone.

"Ah, Carter, I've got a problem here, can I call you back?" the startled voice of Jack says.

"No, please, I think I might have kidnaped someone in my sleep or something," Sam says desperately before he can hang up.

"Huh, you too?" Jack replies.

"Potty!" The little girl demands.

"Sir, I think I'd better…" Sam begins.

"Yes, of course! I'll meet you at work later. No. You don't have car seats. We'll pick the two of you up."

"You have car seats?" Sam says surprised.

"I had a kid, Carter."

"Right," sorry she says.

"How big is she?" he asks.

"Tiny," Sam replies. The girl is drowning in Sam's t-shirt, and a pair of Sam's pajama pants are pooled on the bed next to her.

"Yeah, I'm going to need more. How many months? Pounds?"

"I don't know, Sir, I skipped the baby measuring class at college."

"She's talking right? Closer to two or three?"

"Potty!" the little girl says more insistently.

"Two maybe?" Sam says picking her up, and carrying her to the bathroom.

"Seriously, if you are going to jump on the bed, jump in the middle," Jack scolds to the child on his side of the phone.

Just then Sam catches sight of her face in the mirror of the bathroom.

"Sir, we've got a problem in addition to the munchkins," she says staring at the startled eyes looking back at her from the other side of the mirror. It's not really her face anymore. It's the one she used to wear. Before her body had been taken over by an alien, even the first time. Before she fell for her commanding officer. Before she went through the Stargate. Before Jonas almost derailed her life. Before the Academy. Before the Gulf. Before her mother died.

"I'm young."

"You always were," he laughs over the phone.

"Not this young." Eleven. Was she eleven the last time she didn't have hips?

"Little Potty," the girl pleads.

"I've got to go, Sir," she says. Eleven in small for lifting a toddler.

-0-

Jack is older than she expected. Older than her. Younger than he used to be of course. He is maybe fourteen. He seems flabbergasted by her age.

"You weren't kidding about young, were you Carter?" he asks in shock.

"No," she says.

"I didn't expect this kid to be that much younger than the one with me," he observes nodding toward the miniature version of him who at the age of about four is clutching his hand and looking at Sam like she is an interloper.

"Well Sir," she points out, "I am a lot younger than you are as well."

He chuckles, "Well, I don't exactly think we've got a linear decrease going on here." He fiddles through the clothes in his hand, sizing up a little shirt. "I'm sorry I couldn't find anything resembling appropriate underwear for her. Charlie was a boy," he says handing the shirt and a little pair of overalls to Sam.

"You expect me to dress her?" Sam asks in horror.

"I think it would probably be better if you did," he says looking down at the little mite who wrapped her tiny arms around Sam's leg at the first words to come out of the large man.

Sam sighs, and retreats to her bedroom to quickly dress the little girl.

She comes out just in time to overhear the tail of a conversation Jack is having with the little boy with chocolate brown eyes. "It's going to be okay, Buddy."

"Who is my mommy? Who is my daddy? Who is Gampa?" the child protests.

"I don't know Buddy, but I promise that I am going to take care of you until we find out."

"What if you can't?" the boy pouts.

"If we never find out, then I'll take care of you forever," he says giving the boy a side hug.

"Daddy?" the little girl asks coming out into the room.

"I'm Jack, little one," he corrects her with a smile. Then he pulls her up, and sets her on his hip. She nestles her head against him in a way that clearly means that he will do for a father, no matter what he says. He turns to carry the toddler to the car. The little boy grabs onto Sam's hand, and then looks up at her as if to ask permission after the fact. She smiles and nods at him.

The car seats are a bit of an issue. Johnny, as the little boy is apparently called can easily be put into the seat that Jack already installed. Jack has to try three car seats out from his trunk before he finds one that is the right size for the little girl. Then he still has to get it installed into the car, and the child installed into it. The whole time she has her arms flailing about so ambitiously that you would have though that she was an octopus.

Finally, Sam finds herself sitting next to Jack O'Neill in his trunk. But somehow this is never how she pictured it. The girl in the back seat has downgraded her protest from an outraged yell to a quiet whimper.

"I'm Johnny," the little boy tells her.

"Sammy," she sniffs. This gives Sam a little start, and she looks over at Jack just in time to see that he is hiding a concerned look at her.

"It will be okay," the smaller O'Neill tells the little Carter, reaching his chubby baby arm out in an attempt to grab hers.

"Where?" she sniffs.

"I don't know what's happening either, but they'll take care of us," he says motioning to the adults in the front seat.

"Who?" Sammy sniffs once more.

"Good people," Johnny says with confidence.

Sammy puts forth her hand and grabs onto Johnny's then, and Sam can't help but wish the older Sammy could grab the hand of the older Johnny.

-0-

"I need to talk to Daniel Jackson, Teal'c, and the General, and you really need to get me some coffee," Jack says with an edge of annoyance in his voice that wasn't there the first few times that he stated similar requests.

"Kid, you need to tell us who you are, and who they are," the soldier says looking at the young children that are clinging to the older ones more and more frantically, "so we can get them back to their parents. I'm sure they are worried about them."

Sammy starts to cry turning around so she can burry her snot covered face in Sam's shoulder.

Sam pulls the little girl closer to her, and then demands. "No, you need to stop terrifying the children, and you need to bring me Janet Fraizer, because if anyone can figure this out it is going to be her."

"Doctor Frazier is a very busy woman…." The soldier begins.

"She's not too busy to figure out why her best friend woke up having lost decades and gained a mini-me."

"And get the kids a snack while you're at it," Jack adds grinning at the force behind the words of his miniaturized second-in-command.

-0-

Janet stops short at the threshold of the door. She's seen pictures of Sam when she was younger. There are two versions of Samantha in this room right now, and that's enough to convince her that the other two versions of Jack are genuine as well. She doesn't need a DNA test to know that something is going on here. Her first reaction is to run in, and wrap arms around her best friend.

She's worked in the job long enough to school the expression on her face. They could be a trick, a copy. They could even be some sort of perfect genetic model of their younger selves without having any of the memories that would involve.

"I guess I'll have to cancel that shopping trip with Cassie," Sam quips.

"Yeah, you're not quite driving age yet, are you?" Janet asks staring before her. "Of course, we are going to have to arrange some shopping for them before that." She glances at Jack with compassion in her eyes, "I'm guessing those are Charlie's?"

Jack nods.

"Airman, I'm sure that they are telling the truth. Can you please shut the door, and leave us for a few minutes?"

"I don't think that would be wise, ma'am," he replies.

"Doctor patient confidentially," she says shutting the door herself.

"So, both of you have all of your memories in tack?" she asks.

"I'm the same person that I was when I went to sleep last night," Jack declares.

"How about you, little one?" Janet asks turning to the older toddler, "You have the memories of an old man in there?"

He stares at her.

"Do you remember the Ferris wheel?" Jacks asks the little mite.

He shakes his head, "Too little to ride."

"Do you remember your Daddy telling you that you were too little?" Jack asks with excitement.

"You know my Daddy?" the little boys says excitedly.

"I used to. You don't remember him do you?" Jack asks.

"No," the little boy pouts.

"Do you remember anything before this morning?" Janet asks softly.

The little boy starts to cry.

"Hey, it's okay, little man. It just means it's your birthday."

"Me too?" the little girl asks hopefully.

"You remember anything before today, Kiddo?" Jack asks.

She shakes her head.

"Then it's your birthday too. We're going to have to do something about that before too long. Assuming we've earned enough trust with the good doctor," he adds grinning at her with no less hope in his face than the two children he's made promises too.

"I think we can arrange something. I need to know one thing before we open the door. Whose house were you at last night?" she asks looking from one of the adults to the other.

"What are you talking about, Janet?" Sam says.

Janet sighs, "I'm not going to disclose anything. We're going to have to send people to the place where this change happened. I need to know which of your houses to send that too."

"You're going to have to send them to both our places, Janet. We never broke the frat rules," Sam says looking honestly at her friend. Then she swallows, glancing quickly at Jack before looking back at her friend, "If there was something between my commanding officer and I you'd be the first to know."

"Oh," Janet says putting a hand over her mouth, "Then we might have an even bigger problem than I thought we did."

"What?" Jack asks a headache growing in the back of his head, he really didn't need something else on top of this day.

"We haven't been able to get ahold of Daniel Jackson today."


	2. Birthday

Sam has never heard screaming like that before. Jack has, when Charlie was a newborn and Sara gave him a bath. Jack runs into the hallway of the infirmary, trailed by two toddlers whose hearts he has already won. He takes the wailing infant out of the Airman's arms.

"That can't be Daniel," Sam observes coming around the corner to stare at him.

"I told you this wasn't linear, Carter," he observes smiling as the child's wail becomes less panicked when he lays eyes on the older man.

"Even so, there are two of all of the rest of us, where is the other Daniel?" Sam asks.

"No one else was there," the Airman says, "Perhaps Daniel is at his house, this baby was found in his on base."

"No way Daniel would leave this little baby. If he woke up next to him he would make sure it was taken care of," Sam says shaking her head firmly.

A nurse hands Jack a bottle she hastily prepared out of the emergency stash kept, because a baby is not the strangest thing which has come through the Stargate.

"I think we need to keep looking just in case," Jack says, "Maybe it didn't happen exactly the same way with him than it did with us. Perhaps he didn't get our memories. Who knows what a scared Daniel who isn't really Daniel would do."

"He just got his memories back," Sam says mournfully.

Jack nods solemnly, but he knows that Daniel doesn't have all of his memories back yet. He has enough memories back that he is able to do his job quite well, but there are still holes. Holes that he hides from most of the world, and reveals sometimes when he is alone with his best friend, and worried that he will never be the man that everyone expects him to be. The man who everyone needs to save the world on a regular basis.

Jack isn't entirely sure what an empty shell Daniel would do if he was presented with a newborn. Daniel without his memories almost didn't come back to Earth.

Janet walks out of her office gravely, "I assume my new patient is Doctor Jackson?" she says looking at the infant.

"I don't know about Doctor, but I'm pretty sure it's Daniel," Jack replies.

"The DNA test came back on you and Sam," Janet replies, "Both versions of you are genetically identical to the DNA that we have on file. Apart from a small anomaly to Jack's DNA."

"What kind of an anomaly?" Jack asks at the same time that Sam says, "Only the Colonel's?"

"Yes, it's strange," The Doctor says, answering Sam's question first. Then she continues, "In a court of law these findings would be ruled to be from the same person. There is certainly nothing here that would explain why the two of you have lost so many years, or why there are suddenly two of you."

"So, what are we going to do?" Sam asks.

"Well," Janet says, "For the time being, we are going to have to do something about the fact that it is those children's birthdays."

"In that case, we should probably get these children some clothes that actually fit them," Sam says.

"Clothes for birthday?" Johnny says collapsing on the like a wet noodle and wailing uncontrollably.

"Well, we had all sorts of better things planned, but dramatic children do only get clothes for their birthdays," Jack says completely unimpressed by the show of emotion.

"I'm sorry," Sam says trying to bend down next to the child.

Jack puts out his arm to stop her, "Oh, he doesn't need to be cuddled right now. He can have plenty of that as soon as he decides to behave like a big boy."

A loud sniffle comes from the floor.

"Candy?" The boy asks.

"After lunch and clothes shopping, sure," Jack says.

"Dinosaur," the child demands.

"Sure, you can have a stuffed dinosaur."

The child likes his luck, and tries to push it just a little bit further, " _Real_ dinosaur."

"I am not that good, little man," Jack says picking up the small child, and letting the boy snuggle into him as a few leftover sobs run through his body.

"I'll get the two of you a driver," Janet says.

"That's all right. After all the work it took to get the car seats into the car I don't really want to go through that again," Jack says.

"I'm afraid that you don't really look like you're old enough to drive. If you're pulled over you don't have the sort of a license that anyone would believe. In fact, the very existence of all four of you would be a little bit hard to explain," Janet says.

Jack sighs, "You are right, it's probably better to stay under the radar for a while."

-0-

They didn't take the baby. Partly because Jack was pretty sure he already knew his size, partly because Janet hadn't done any of the testing on him, and mostly because it seamed to be the baby's naptime.

With promises of candy and birthday toys dancing in their heads the children were pretty determined to be on their best behavior. Still, Sammy begins to whine after she tries on the third outfit. So, they buy what they know fit, and pick up the necessary underwear and socks, as well as adding on additional promises in order to get the children to try on some shoes.

In the toy section of the store Johnny finds a big-eyed t-rex, and Samantha latches onto a sassy teenager doll.

The kids are satisfied, but Jack knows that won't last long so he picks out a box of blocks and a few coloring books and crayons.

Sam insists on picking up a few books. Johnny sighs and complains, and Sammy seamed interested in it until she saw his apathy. Sam seams to have no trouble picking out the sort of books that the little girl would enjoy.

Then there is lunch which Johnny clearly only eats for the reward of candy.

That is the highlight of the adult's trip as well. The candy store is apparently riches beyond their wildest dreams.

"One thing?" Sam asks holding up a single finger.

"One thing to eat right now, I think, but you can pick out a few."

Johnny's selection is rapid and large.

Sammy's is small, slow, thoughtful, and tentative. She walks through the entire store looking at everything before she makes her first choice. She keeps looking at the adults, and begging for reassurances which they give.

"Baby girl, pick out whatever you want. If Johnny's stash isn't too much I don't think you'll go overboard," Jack says.

Johnny tries to object, but he can't around the giant gumdrop in his mouth. So, he just shrugs.

Sammy makes her selections, and Jack O'Neill makes a note that buttered popcorn jellybeans and chocolate covered cashews are the way to Samantha's heart.

-0-

"Maybe Daniel didn't leave," Sam observes holding the active little Daniel while the toddlers sleep off the effects of the shopping trip.

"You think the Airman missed him in the room?"

"It wouldn't have been the first time," Sam says remembering all the times that her teammate had gone invisible.

"Maybe this is him," she says.

"There were two versions of both of us."

"I know, but Teal'c didn't get younger at all, and the relationship between the ages of us and our younger doubles are not linear. Maybe he's the only one."

"Do you think he's got Daniel's memories then?" Jack asks looking at the child with alarm.

"Not necessarily. I'm not even sure if a baby's mind can handle an adult consciousness. Sam pauses, wondering if she should go on, "Maybe there is a reason why Daniel is so young. It's true that the relationship between our ages before this happened and our ages now isn't easy to predict, there is a relationship. I was younger than you before we started, and I still am. So is she."

"Daniel isn't that much younger than me," Jack objects.

"Maybe he is. He just came back from assentation. His memories might have been from an older man, but his body was only a few months old. The one that Omma put him in when he came back was a different one than the one filled with radiation that she took him out of.

"So they couldn't make two of them. You can't divide three months that many times," Jack observes. Johnny whimpers in his sleep and Jack runs his hand over it, "It's strange, isn't it? I don't know quite how to refer to them. They are after all us."

"Us without our memories, which would be most of our personality," Sam says patiently.

"I'm glad he doesn't have everything in his head I do," Jack says slowly, "Maybe he'll have a chance of growing up right."

"You grew up pretty well, Sir."

"Mommy!" The little girl cries waking up from some sort of nightmare. Sam pulls the little girl over to her.

"You're pretty young to be a mother," General Hammond says entering the room.

"I'm not as young as I look, Sir," she says smiling at him.

"I know," the General says, "I'm sure that we're going to have this whole thing fixed soon, but…until then I think you should come and stay at my house."

"Sir, we couldn't impose on you like that," Sam argues.

"You know how much I love my grandkids, but their room at my house doesn't get used all that often. I'd love to fill it with these kiddos for a couple days.

"I won't object to you spending some time with her, Sir. I know how good you are with the first little Sam. I want to be the one who takes care of her though." Sam doesn't say all of the other things that she is thinking. Things about how worried she is that this is temporary. That it is going to be "solved" like the General suggested. That she won't be able to keep this little mite.

"Both of them," the General says turning toward Jack, and sensing that he didn't know he was included. "This offer is for all the minoritized versions of SG-1."

"I appreciate it sir," Jack says, "I want to take care of the kids too."

"I think we have to consider what we are going to do until you are retuned," the General says.

"Well, I'm still going to take care for them," Jack says.

"Sir," Sam objects.

"Fine, we'll take care of the children," Jack adds hastily. He tries hard to ignore the strange feeling in his stomach that this words cause. The idea of raising children with Samantha Carter is very pleasant. The feelings feel wrong, even more wrong than they usually do, because now his second-in-command is in the body of a little girl.

"If you are not retuned to your proper body that is not going to be possible. People might notice people your age raising youngsters," the General objects.

"I may look like I am young, but I am way too old to be reliant on someone else," Jack says.

"I would give you all the independence you needed. You would just have a place to live, and another person to love those little mights," he says smiling as Johnny stretches.

Johnny opens up his eyes and looks at the General, "Good man?" he asks Johnny.

"Very good man," Jack assures him.

"Up," the little boy requests holding his arms up. The General picks him up. The General can't help, but remember that it wasn't this easy to make friends with the older version of Jack O'Neill.


	3. Daddy's Home

21 "Johnny, do not climb the fence," Jack commands.

The little boy looks back at the teenager, grins, and keeps climbing. He correctly calculated that Jack couldn't leave the grill to go get him right then without endangering the two smaller children.

"You will have a time out at some point, child," Jack says with a sigh not sure if John is old enough that 'eventually' is going to do any good.

An old woman glares over a deck at them, "What are you doing in the General's yard?"

"Hello, Ma'am, we're friends of the General."

"You're awfully young to be grilling," she observes.

"Yes."

"You're babysitting all these children?" the woman asks.

Just then Sam comes out of the room.

"Johnny's being naughty and dangerous," Jack says pointing to the little boy.

Sam runs over, and scoops up the little boy, "Were you told not to climb?"

Johnny just answers by glaring at her.

"Where is the General?" the older woman demands.

"He's at work," Sam says.

"He left you alone, all day?" the woman is horrified.

"I'm sorry, what's your name?" Sam asks.

"Mrs. Henderson," she replies.

"Listen, Mrs. Henderson, our parents' work with the General. They're in a great deal of danger, and can't come home right now. The general was nice enough to let us stay with him for a while," Sam says.

"Oh, you poor little dears. I'll be right over to look after you," the woman says.

"That's really not necessary," Sam tells the women.

"Oh, it's really no bother," she says disappearing into her house.

"I'm going to go call Auntie Janet," Sam says carrying Johnny into the house.

Johnny grins in her arms, the time out is clearly not happening.

-0-

"Auntie Janet, I'm so glad you could come," Sam says with no small amount of sarcasm in her voice.

"Yes, I heard you had a volunteer babysitter," she says turning to the women, "I appreciate your concern, but I'm here now."

"You are their aunt?"

"Not genetically, no," Janet says.

"There are a lot of children here, and it appears you brought another," the woman says staring at Cassie.

Cassie is giggling looking at the younger versions of her chess friends.

"I can stay with the children as long as necessary," Mrs. Henderson repeats.

"I appreciate that," Janet says, "But we've got to get back to base," she says looking at Sam, "Your dad's here. He's got some information."

"Okay, little ones potty break before we go," Jack declares.

"I don't have to go potty," Johnny says.

"Don't you still owe me a time out?" Jack asks causing the toddler to go running into the bathroom.

"How long are we going to hold that one over his head?" Sam asks.

"As long as it lasts," Jack says, neither mises how gloomy Janet looks at the mention of time.

-0-

"Daddy!" the little Sam says running into her father's arms.

He scoops her up, crying a little, "Oh, what a flashback you are, baby."

"You remember him?" Sam asks.

"Duh! He's Daddy," Sammy says.

"That's new," Jack observes turning to Johnny, "Buddy, do you remember your parents? Grandpa? You've talked about a grandpa when she hasn't."

The boy considers, "Almost remember," Then he looks at Sam cuddled into her father, "Where is Mommy? Daddy? Grandpa?"

Jack swallows hard before saying, "They are gone."

"Find them?" he pleads.

Jacob holds out his hands, but as soon as the child doesn't go into them Jack scoops him up, "It's okay Buddy. Jack's got you."

The child quietly sobs, and Janet surveys the situation, "I guess our discussion is going to be delayed for a little bit."

"Kiddos, you want ice cream?"

Johnny nods somewhat reluctantly, and Jacob reaches for the baby. Jack shakes his head.

"Are we sure that he doesn't understand everything that we say?" Jacob asks carefully.

"If he does he serves to be at the briefing as much as we do," Jack replies.

"Okay, kiddos, baby is too little for ice cream anyway," Jacob says reaching out to take Johnny's hand.

-0-

"They can't be dying, they're little kids," Sam says staring at the table of the briefing room in order to avoid looking at her friend's face as she explains the situation before them. They were dying all of them, child included.

"It's not aging," Janet says with a sigh, "You were all unstable since the beginning."

"So how do we fix it?" Jack asks abruptly.

"I'm not sure we can, sir," Janet says.

"No, you don't understand, the lives of children are on the line here, how are we going to fix it?"

"Jacob is offering symbionts," Janet says calmly.

"For toddlers?" Jack asks.

"Yes, and for you, you're a lot more valuable then you seam to think, Sir," Janet says calmly.

"I've been down that road before, and I'm pretty sure I don't want to subject a child to that. Letting reetou Charlie get snaked has haunted me ever since my own run in with the Tok'ra."

"He is also willing to freeze you."

"No," Jack says.

"We're not talking about our cryogenic storage Sir, this is much safer than that," Sam says.

"You can freeze yourself, and the kids."

"Sir, I don't want you to die," Sam pleads.

"Well, I don't want to spend eternity in the Tokra's freezer."

There is a pause before Jack says, "How much time do we have? We don't have to freeze the kids right away, do we?"

"It's hard to tell," Janet says, "But it's probably a matter of a few days."

"These kids have just started to live, I would love to give them a little fun before it was over," he says sadly.

"I don't see anything wrong with it as long as we have twice daily check-ups for monitoring purposes," Janet says.

"Okay, let's get the kids!" Jack exclaims hoping up to leave the room with Sam behind him.


	4. Fishing

"How was the ice cream?" Sam says smiling at the toddlers.

"Gooder than candy," Johnny declares.

Sam reaches to pick him up, and he wraps his sticky hands around her. She turns her back so the table can't see her cry. Jack pats her on the shoulder before cleaning the children with the wet whips which have been omnipotent since they got the kids.

"Kiddos, we're going to do something really fun today. What do you think it should be?" Jack asks.

Sammy stands up, and holds her arms up to have Jack pick her up.

"Anything kiddos, zoo, movie, theme park…"

"Fishing," Johnny says.

"Of course, kid," Jack says with a grin.

"'Tory," Sammy says.

"You want to bring some books along for fishing?" Sam asks.

"These kids, are so us," Jack mutters.

-0-

Daniel walks up behind them, and sits down next to them on the bank of the stream.

Sam stops reading a the book about starts, and looks at him.

"You guys are all clones," he declares.

"What's a clone?" Johnny asks.

Daniel looks at the boy in panic.

"Awesome. Clone means awesome," Jack says with sarcasm he hopes the boy is too young to detect.

"So where are the 'real' ones," Sam asks somewhat cryptically.

"Probably still with the Asgard," Daniel says.

"So, are we going to catch the person who did this to us? Catch them, and make them fix us? Fix the kids?" Jack asks.

Daniel looks doubtful.

"Okay kids, let's go back to the base," Sam says.

Johnny throws his fishing pole angrily.

"I told you it was past nap time," Sam says glaring at the older version of the little boy.

"We can sleep when we're…" the world 'dead' dies on Jack's lips.

"Come on Buddy," Jack says picking him up.

"Fishing!" the child whines.

"It's okay, we can come back fishing tomorrow."

"Fishing now!" the little boy says pounding on his chest.

Jack holds the boy tight until he goes limp, and lays against Jack sleepily. Tears start to run down his face, "We did not have enough time. We need more time."

"We'll find a way to get more time, Sir," Sam says.

-0-

This was not how Jack imagined ending up in bed with Samantha Carter. There were three children and two zats in between the two of them.

"We've got this Carter," Jack assures her. It's always unnerving to see Carter nervous. People who have blown up sun should not look worried, but what really bothers him is the fact that he really hates looking at the face of his worried second in command when she's a child.

"I don't like going to battle with children," she says.

"You guys are ready to fight with the alien, aren't you?" Jack asks.

Johnny stands up on the bed, and starts jumping, "I can do battle!" he exclaims.

"Me to!" Sammy exclaims jumping next to him.

"Yes babies," Sam says, "You are fierce."

"Not babies," they declare together causing Sam and Jack to laugh. Then they are floating, and the voice of an Asgard says, "Do not be afraid."

Jack zats, and Sam catches the floating baby Daniel on her way over to the control panel which she uses to get the rest of the team in the room. Johnny is looking at the alien with fascinated curiosity while Sammy is crying.

Jack picks up the little girl, and tucks her into his side. "It's okay." Sam begins moving the stones around on the consol.

The grown versions of Jack, Sam, and Daniel enter the room. "What the hell is going on?" the elder Jack asks.

"Sir, don't swear around children," the older Sam scolds.

"What's with the mini mes?" Jack asks in a more gentle tone.

"This Ass guard got a little trigger happy with the xerox button," teenaged Jack replies.

"Oh my God!" Sam replies staring at the small version of herself. She holds out her hands to the child to take her from the teenage boy, but the girl turns from her not Jack's shoulder.

"I'm sorry, Sam," he says, "She doesn't know you.

"Scared of myself," she sighs, "I'm going to try not to analyze that too much."

Just then Thor appears.

"It's about time!" Jack exclaims.

"I'm sorry it took me a while to get here, I was busy with other matters," he says before turning to the other Asgard who is beginning to wake up, "Loki, what have you done?"

"Only what was necessary," Loki says.

"Why did you create two versions of each?" Thor asks.

"I would have started with why he made one version," the teenaged Jack snarks earning him an elbow in the ribs by the teenaged Sam.

"When the first versions came out so young, I attempted a second to fix the problem, but I only made it worse. I do not know why the clones did not properly age."

"It was a safeguard put in place to make their DNA tamper proof," Thor replies.

"I'm sorry, you knew that someone might try to tamper with our DNA before?" Sam asks in shock.

"The people of Earth have advanced far beyond what we thought they would have by now, the three of you are very advanced."

The two older versions of Jack grin, but Sam asks in confusion, "How so? I mean, how are we different from the rest of the people of Earth?"

"Daniel Jackson's body was formed by an assented being. They have forgotten what human DNA was before they ascended, and…"

"You're saying Oma put me back together better?" Daniel asks with his eyebrows raised.

Thor nods, "Jack contains a rare gene which all ancients contained, but which few of his species have maintained."

"What about me?" Sam asks stepping forward.

"Your DNA sequence contains many common genes that are rarely all present in one individual," Thor says.

"Meaning?"

"Major Carter is an extraordinary human being," he replies.

"I didn't need any test tubes to tell that to me," the adult Jack replies, looking around the room with immediate regret that the words had left his mouth.

"So, are we the answer we've been looking for?" Daniel asks.

"No," Thor says dismissively.

"Thor, can you do something about the unstable clones?" Sam pleads.

"You wish your clones to live?" Thor asks in surprise.

Thor looks at Loki who replies, "There was no reason for the clones to survive."

"We can fix that," Thor says.


End file.
